Sunday, May 17, 2009

A film written and directed by Guylaine Dionne that deals with quite interesting matters, but I find that the movie travels too many situations with none really developed, except one that is totally lesbian interest. Unfortunately the look and feel of the lesbian interest story is done like old movies where everything is just suggested and nothing is clearly shown –which I do not really mind the style as one recent movie done with the same style is Anne Fontaine’s Nathalie- but in this movie is totally amateurish in the script, the directing style and especially editing. Still the film has a “je ne sais quoi” that totally grabs your attention until the very end of the movie.

The movie tells about illegal immigration, the awful life of female illegal aliens that get involved in the pole/strip/naked dancing clubs and their inability to get out of this lifestyle thanks to pimps that totally control their ignorance and lack of proper documents. The vehicle to tell this story is a recent graduated student, Priscilla that came to Canada with a student visa, wanted to stay but authorities didn’t granted her an extension, so she stays the same as life in her native Brazil is harder according to her parents. She’s looking for a job as money is getting low and asks -what looks like- a clerk at a washing machines/coffee shop to help her find a job. He helps her and the job is at a naked dancers club. She does not want this type of work, reluctantly enters the club and there she watches Milagro perform and that changes everything for her. She takes the job and is Milagro the one that teaches her how to dance… and more.

As some of you can easily imagine Priscilla totally falls for Milagro and you can really see how both get involved even when you will not see one kiss. The rest of the story you’ll have to watch it as there are a lot of twists, many really predictable and a few unexpected. In the end, the more developed story the film tells is the romance between Priscilla and Milagro; by the way Milagro is not her real name as she’s Quebecois and you will find her name and more near the end when the plot unravels.

Now that I’m writing about this movie I believe that the “je ne sais quoi” the movie has is the mostly good performance by Clara Furey that plays Milagro, as she really does a great job performing this character that travels a range from manipulative bitch and cold business woman to the most sensitive mother, with “everything” in-between.

The movie as a movie is really pretentious and has too-long arty scenes that do not really contribute to the story or the characters; still for me it was a great trip down memory lane when watching Montreal and Quebec countryside during winter as camera greatly captured many urban and countryside scenes similar to what I have seen with my own eyes. But honestly tech specs are clearly below average.

Please do not get high expectations with this film as definitively is not your regular genre story or film. Still, as I suggested above and now confirm, I couldn’t take my eyes from the screen and wanted to know what was going on until the very “happy” end. So, if you do not rise your expectations maybe you will enjoy this film if only for the romance part, like I did.